On the subject of angels - Scene IV

One of the things we know about Jesus and about the stories he told was that hospitality was important. The simple meal was spiritual. Unlike a number of the religious thinkers of his day it wasn’t so much what you ate but your attitude towards those you ate with, or to be precise those you refused to eat with. Jesus practised an open hospitality refusing to let the social, political, religious rules governing who should socialize with whom, govern the tables he sat at. In the minds of many he opened himself to disease, to heresy, to spiritual impurity, to violence, and to the damnation of his soul. It is hard to get our 21st century minds around the foreign parameters of 1st century Palestinian culture.

To follow Jesus is to be hospitable enough to be uncomfortable. Sometimes this means giving up your ‘seat’, your place of privilege, for a guest while you perch on the edge, uncomfortable and inconvenienced.

When I was a child my grandparents had a custom of always cooking enough so that one more person could sit at the meal table. You were never sure just who might turn up and need some food. There was always an angel, whether prince, peasant, or pauper, who might need entertaining.